that was on c-span's booknotes program. can watch it on line at booktv.org or at c-span.org. justice o'connor thanks for being with us on booktv. >> thank you. up next on booktv "after words" with guest host niger innis executive director of the tea party.net. this week mike gonzalez had his first book "a race for the future" how conservatives can break the liberal monopoly on hispanic americans. and at the cuban born former journalist explains that the hispanic american population can

be persuaded to vote republican but only at the party impresses the community's core values. the program is about an hour. >> host: mike i am fascinated by your book in particular in the title. you refer to what i think is the politically correct term of latinos as hispanics. so i would like you to dig into that and tell me why you refer to or i suppose i will put it this way, how dare you break out of the politically correct bubble of latinos and refer to hispanics. what are the roots of that? >> guest: thank you for that question. i think both terms are anyway false of their own way. the term hispanic for example is the product of the bureaucracy. bureaucrats working in the nixon administration in the 1970s were all of a sudden faced with

this big influx of new immigrants because the laws have been changed in the 1960s, a lot of whom are immigrants from latin america including me and my family by the way he came here in 1974 and it's almost like they didn't know how to handle this multitude of people but more important than not, this is the aftermath of the civil rights act which was created for african-americans and then all of a sudden the bureaucracy and many of the leaders -- post of the activis activists. >> guest: the activists of the group also want to get in on the acts of the bureaucracy creates for minorities which eventually by the end of the 70s were african-americans, hispanic, native americans and asians. so the term hispanic is created and minorities as immigrants. it sets them apart and it does so for the purpose of giving them affirmative action in

government set-asides read explicitly if you go back to the documents of that eric is the this is what it says and does. >> host: was this the government's intent or activists within the government? with activists outside partial groups putting pressure on the government collects what do you think this manifests itself in? >> guest: i think the answer is both. obviously the activists especially the mexican-american activist, there's a famous book written in the early 70's saying mexican-americans -- and they wanted to make mexican-americans into one of the minority groups. now i think you have to understand that the mexican-americans rank-and-file themselves is really hard. they did not want to be seen as minorities. >> host: most mexican-americans at that time saw themselves as white. >> guest: in fact many of them still to this day if you look on the census form, this has to do

with reality and -. >> host: far be it from government to vindicate from reality. >> guest: government should not be involved at all erisa classifications. i mean government should strive for a colorblind policy so we can have a colorblind society with government from the beginning has been involved in these classifications. out of that comes the term hispanic. i remember when i was a right. >> host: let's divert a little bit and talk about you. you said you obviously migrated here. from where and what were the circumstances? >> guest: i was born in cuba and i left cuba under horrible circumstances, communism and all that and then went to spain at the age of 12. two years later we came here to new york. >> host: you must be a mets fan. i'm a yankees fan. >> guest: i'm a mets fan but i

did go to shea stadium a lot and i tell people i was raised under fidel castro and cisco franklin. so when i was first informed by one of my uncles and there's this new term being bandied about we are going to be called hispanics i said what? what is that about? i am cuban and what i was becoming less american. today i see myself as a cuban-american, as an american perspective way. a conservative american but also a cuban-american. i'm very proud of my heritage in my lineage so i wrote the book to shine a light on the book. a lot of the books are written about hispanics and i have to use that term because it's been created. it does not talk about any of these things so i wrote "a race for the future" to my checo line on this and we can go on about latino later but hispanics part of bureaucracy in order to give

affirmative action and government benefits to this group and other groups. >> host: of course the term hispanic is a very inaccurate term because within that generalization of spanish were latinos there are so many subgroups. you have cuban-americans and you have got puerto ricans that are also caribbean and cuba is a caribbean nation but you also have central america and then you have the oldest so-called hispanic group, mexican-americans in the southwest. let's dive into that little bit. the variations within the big umbrella of hispanics. >> guest: that is one of the worst things about these labels for hispanic or latino which i hardly ever use is that it conceals these differences and it creates the false impression in this monolithic community. now obviously language is a very

paula -- a powerful thing and the fact that a guatemalan immigrant can arrive here and saying argentine or cuban is very important but i can tell you a guatemalan arriving in the u.s. would not see an argentine his compatriot and a quarter mall in american would have much more in common with americans who are not hispanic then she would say venezuela. so i think yes the language at bowery -- a very powerful bond we both agree. >> host: any other ties? obviously language is the most obvious tie among the various latino subgroups that are there any other ties that you are aware of in researching the bo book? i was inspired as a young man meeting thomas soul who i'm sure we both admire and he wrote a book called ethnic america. i saw your book is almost, almost an improvement in that it

dug even deeper into the various ethnics which focus on latinos were hispanics. but i'm just fascinated by the way you go to the history and not only diversity it seems to me the purpose of the book is not only diversity among the different hispanic groups but generationally there's a difference as well. >> guest: i think that is a very important point and i go on and i look into this deeply in "a race for the future." take mexican-americans. you know to begin with is a misnomer in many ways. some mexican-americans have never belonged to the spanish colony of mexico. by the way the thing they have in common is that we were all colonized by either spain or portugal so that's a very powerful thing. these are very different. the cuisine of mexico is very different from the cuisine of cuba. cubans and puerto ricans share many traits, many ethnic

cultural culinary traits. we both like baseball and in south america they play baseball and when i got to spain i was a 12-year-old boy and at recess i had to play soccer with spaniards who had been playing soccer since they were born. >> host: you had a little bit of a disadvantage, did you? >> guest: it was very humblin humbling. as a cuban i came out with the bad in my hand but let's take mexican-americans. it's very important. >> host: the largest of the subgroups by far. >> guest: 66% of hispanic americans are mexicans and by far the largest and the most important. their cultural imprint in the southwest cannot be denied. it has to be taken into account. i compared only to the influence of the scotch-irish in appalachia and the south. i was just in scotland for

example and if you listen to scottish music you recognize its appalacian. it's the same thing. >> host: are you in the middle of a hatfield mccoy feud here? >> guest: exactly. you go to texas and mexico and colorado and it's the same thing. the culture and influence, the couple errors nothing without us lasso and his rodeo. the hat, well it's not sure that it came from mexico. i may not go there but the cowboy many are seen with the traits of the cowboy is his stoicism. his individualism. he can be traced to the mexican man so mexicans have this very important imprint and especially new mexicans can trace their

ancestry to the 1500's. i talked to a mexican that i put in my books up for very proud of that. he says one of my ancestors came as the spanish conquistador who cross the rio grande. cubans and americans like me began to arrive in 1959 obviously because of the communist rival of fidel castro and have a complete -- now it's true there was a cuban migration in the 1900s and 1800's to tampa and key west that the cuban migration began. we have been here since the 60s. puerto ricans are not immigrants. they were born in the state of puerto rico which is obviously they can vote as soon as they arrive. >> host: in fact it's

fascinating in a talk about this in your book duality among puerto ricans in among puerto ricans and the one sense they are not as assimilated as some of the other groups that calm to the united states but they are born american citizens. talk about that a little bit. >> guest: they don't experience the cultural guillotine. you will arrive in your cut off from the country of origin. >> host: as an african-american or black american i know nothing about this guillotine. >> guest: it's fascinating african-americans have gone back to africa to their roots. traditionally many of the european went back to sicily and ireland and were cut off from her home country. in fact some immigrant communities keep traditions here that have disappeared in their homeland. it's the case with many

german-americans for several generations have german traditions that have disappeared in germany proper. >> host: it's fascinating essay that and i'm a big fan of brazil. i went to el salvador and i found there were some traditions that the african transplants to brazil had kept their somewhat so that now you have west africans going to kind of like a reverse culture going to learn some of the cultural ancient cultural traditions that they have lost. >> guest: is a similar situation with cuba which is second only to brazil and perhaps second only to cuba and having a large and important african-american culture. >> host: a lot of people don't make that presumption. dive diving that a little bit because the members people that immigrated after 1959 after the rise of castro, was this a mixture of cubans?

was that african cubans disproportionately? was that european cubans are white cubans, mixed cubans? >> guest: obviously many mixed cubans came as well. what i have heard is that his cubans came in to florida they have a segregated state and black cubans were. they could not stand being segregated from their former compatriots so then they moved up north. those that had a very important colony of cubans in new jersey starting in the 60s and now i don't know that for a fact that i have heard that this was something that happened in florida that black cubans that i'm not going to be segregated. they moved to new jersey north where there was no segregation. so yes, the so-called hispanic community was very varied.

i think the term hispanic, i don't like its origins in fact because i don't think -- chavez and i don't want to hammer what she said that she said victimization robs hispanics of real power and i completely agree with that. the history of immigration in this country is crawling through broken glass to succeed. the italians did it, the average did at the bohemian stated. with hispanics is the first time the federal government intervenes and says no we must help you and it happens because they come in the 70s when theirs is the idea that the federal government must be there. >> host: let's drill down into that a little bit more. tell us how this new classification enabling hispanics or latinos to have access to affirmative action

into government benefits and to see themselves as differently, how is that hindered the traditional process of assimilation and immigration? >> guest: it sets them apart. draws a line between them and the early immigrants and says you know you are different. you don't aspire to what they did in fact it's unfortunate that we have done this is a country throw out roadblocks to assimilation. our schools which were the cauldron where the melting pot happened. schools were set up by the founding fathers from the beginning. jefferson was very interested in education. he set out at the university of virginia. he understood that he was there and that republican values needed to be taught. >> host: that small r republican. >> guest: of course.

when they asked if they could keep that they were concerned about keeping a about keeping the republican about republican values would be taught at the public school level and they were until sometime in the middle of the 20th century. >> host: the progressive area. >> guest: the progressives tried it and lost and now what you have is we no longer assimilate in the public school system and we no longer teach civic values. the civic values teach how to demonstrate. >> host: how to balkanize. >> guest: how to balkanize. >> host: under the guise of multiculturalism and the importance of multiculturalism. >> host: by the way it's a very worrying thing. let me go back to what i said and i coded into it in "a race for the future" at this battle

was formed in the 1920s by progressives randolph bourne and horace callan and marcuse who wanted to have what they call the transnational america which was a play where you would have different pockets, federation of different nations is what they call that. they lost that fight to the abolitionists. assimilation is one and that we have as oversold as a country close together that's able to fight world war ii as a country. you have to see these movies from world war ii. as a guy from her brooklyn in a mexican guy from texas on an irish guy from boston and a wasp-ish guy and they are all coming together to fight in these john ways -- john wayne movies. randolph bourne -- they never gave up. this is what you see today.

it's the same ideology. not the same people but these are the ideological heirs. >> host: i think it's an excellent point and i think it's important that they we communicate that more and more. these are americans that are pushing this balkanization and breaking away from the small r republican values that sustained us as a country. these are not formed. >> guest: herbert marcuse. >> host: this is something that is not coming across because of immigrants. oftentimes is something that is given to immigrants were force-fed to immigrants. >> guest: that's the thing. we see immigrants have especially hispanics as agents of change. the people who want to fundamentally transform america to quote one famous progressive see hispanics at as agents of change and i go into this in my book "a race for the future." i make an argument that

hispanics can and should be agents for conserving our traditional values and america's place in the world. we are seeing right now in the summer of 2014 what happens when america withdraws from being the leader in the world. hispanics, conservatives need to join the battle, join this battle and in the subtitle of my book i say how hispanic -- they can break the monopoly over hispanics. the liberal monopoly over hispanics. to some degree we need to engage because hispanics need to be reached out to. they cannot just received one message. the description of america as a racist place as a place that's so unfair that hispanics need government intervention. >> host: actually that does

cut against usually those who immigrate to the united states because when i come to united states they are not coming to a miserable racist nation. they are coming for success. >> guest: they are attracted by fundamentally two things, our liberty and our prosperity. this is where my family came here looking for in the 1970s to use us as agents of change to transform this historical experiment in self-government that is produced so much liberty and so much prosperity. it's something i felt i had to fight again so i wrote a book. conservatives have to reach out to hispanics with an unabashed in norman rockwell vision of america would still exist. we are country people pitching in together, helping each other. the only government official and it's a wonderful life was the bank examiner. >> host: he is the bad guy. >> guest: in the end he -- so

it's a wonderful life is about a americans pitching in together regular americans immigrants and i think we have to go out and tell hispanics this is america. don't listen to liberals and give them the mobility message, you know how to repair human capital, how to repair social capital and how to make sure they have financial capital in the bank account. >> host: absolutely one of the things you talk about your book is the breakdown in the family because traditionally those conservatives that have had the vision that you and i both share that we need to reach out to minorities and latinos and african-americans and the like have always had a stereotype. it's a good stereotype which is latinos are hispanics are natural conservatives and they believe in family values and have stronger values. to my great chagrin when i was reading your book that may at

one time been the case among hispanics but unfortunately you are following a lot of the trends that exist here in united states particularly unfortunately among my people, black americans which is the breakdown of the family. >> guest: riggins used to say hispanics are conservatives and just don't know it yet. hispanics have fundamental characteristics that are conservative. for example hispanics are well represented in the armed forces. hispanics have a strong work ethic. the immigrant hispanics and i looked at the statistics, have labor petition patient that rivals that of native americans. hispanics believe in the strong family and hispanics especially mexican-americans go to church however what has happened because the bulk of the demographic change has come from 1965 just as we have a social tearing down of the norms that have been in this country for generations in decades, we have

many immigrants -- the culture that was presented to them. >> host: they have assimilated, just as some like it to some of the negative social pathologies. >> guest: sociologists use the term downward association. the horrifying statistic is the out of wedlock rate which is high for hispanics as a whole now, it's different for different groups with high for all groups even cuban-americans. for hispanics as a whole was 53%. >> host: wow and that would have been the case a generation ago. >> guest: no, no. let me give you statistics for cubans. i believe last year was 40%. 10 years ago was 29%. very similar to the out of wedlock rate of non-hispanic whites. illegitimacy is a problem because it stands upstream from

a lot of social issues. kids who are born and raised without a father are nine times, five times as likely to drop out of school, nine times as likely to commit a crime and 10 times as likely to be in prison. i am quoting candidate barack obama in 2008 to set this. obama talked about this a lot. at the beginning of his first term, he has the initiative but even when he launched it he didn't talk a lot about the out of wedlock rate which he needs to talk about. >> host: he is ideally placed to talk about it. >> guest: he is ideally placed to talk about it in something that happened but this thing in ferguson we had recently is that when barack obama came out and gave a speech people were attacking him for being like

bill cosby. bill cosby juan williams you yourself a lot of courageous african-americans are speaking about this. you understand that the family is the foundation for education which is to get out of poverty, stability. this is not coming from a religious perspective if you will. >> host: to pragmatic imperative. >> guest: to pragmatic economic imperatives and candidate barack obama had it right. >> host: it's unfortunate he has gone away from it. do you think of progress -- progressive forces pulled in against it and said you are blaming the victim is the term they use? >> guest: this is what they used on patrick moynihan. he wrote about this in the 60s when the out of wedlock birthrate in the african-american community was in the low 20s.

it's now 72%. he was pilloried for it. bill cosby is pilloried. juan williams is pilloried. you receive a tax of barack obama needs to be more courageous and talk about this and talk about also what's happening in the hispanic community. i talk about in my book "a race for the future" and it's extremely important. >> host: which group of these various subgroups among hispanics have what they assimilated in the wrong way the least if you will and maintain that traditional family? >> guest: i would say that all groups need improvement across-the-board. if you look at mexican-americans in new mexico they are family structure has held up pretty well. >> host: these mexican-americans are the olde

oldest. >> guest: i call them our mexican founding fathers. they have been there since the 1600's. they have land deeds in the conflict talk about their land deeds from the 1700's. >> host: clive and bundy is not the only one that has land issues. >> guest: exactly, exactly. you know all of us have faced the problem that assimilation is no longer emphasized by the schools, fire institutions by the army. by hollywood. forget it, hollywood does anything he can to tear down the idea. by the way assimilation does not mean abandoning. i'm very proud of my cuban ancestors. i'm very proud of what they did and cumin culture. you don't cease to love your mother or your grandmother when you marry your wife.

>> host: oftentimes it's a reaffirmation. >> guest: exactly, exactly. part of the american contractors that you have to accept american values that you have to respect the constitution that you have to abide and defend the constitution. to create a multicultural society creates many problems for democracy. >> host: and for the future of the country and for all americans in the country. i definitely want to talk to you more about that when we come back after a short break. >> guest: thank you. >> host: we are here with mike

gonzalez, "a race for the future" and i want to talk to about that. a lot of folks say that the future of america, the demographic changes we are becoming a browner nature if you will -- nation if you own some folks have put it we can either go the way of texas as a country are the way of california. you talk about this a little bit in your book. latinos and hispanics in mexico, talk about it. >> guest: i completely agree. i wrote a chapter on this because i think it actually shows california is bringing jobs. california believe has one third of the welfare recipients in the whole country or one third of welfare expenditures. >> host: wow. less than 15% of population. >> guest: less than 15% of the population. texas hispanics do a lot better in a number of statistics that i talked about in my book "a race for the future" been to

california and hispanics. one particular area and to me one of the most is important which is education and that is the racial gap between non-hispanic whites and hispanics. hispanics, the gap is a lot smaller, a lot smaller in texas than it is in california. but california has the third-highest in the nation. >> host: why is back? is that because it's a social welfare state or because of the culture of california old versus the culture of texas? >> guest: i think south korea is a middle-class country with a free democracy and a higher gdp per-capita. we have a laboratory experiment of east germany and west germany and you can say between the

cheek you have a laboratory experiment of cuba and -- we have a bit of that with texas and california. and the fact is that these policies marxism doesn't work and it's been proven many times. you have to be an academic or an intellectual to deny reality -- to that reality so you have that dichotomy. you have a lot of californians moving to texas and not a lot of texans moving to california. i think if you look at a night going to my book as to why that might be. texas has an older hispanic population. texas already when it joined the union in 1945 i believe one third is mexican by pre-existing mexican population. >> host: to reinforce your

point when we went to war with mexico, the mexican-american war we had a lot of american mexicans have fought on the u.s. side. >> guest: the alamo. there were mexican-americans at the alamo. there were mexican-americans who thought on the texas side who should be celebrated. sometimes they are in texas. what you have in california is the pre-existing mexican population was much tinier and they get overwhelmed by the gold rush. so they are not as important culturally. you don't often hear people in california saying my family was here pre-1943 you hear a lot of texans mexican-americans from texas say my family, trace it. he goes back to people who were here in the 1700's and 1800's. that gives them a sense of stability but also a cultural stake which is so important. this is something that part of my message to conservatives is that we have to understand the

important cultural imprint of mexican-americans in texas, new mexico and the southwest and the creation of the west and i think we need to teach this as well. >> host: these are not immigrants to the west. these are folks who made the west what it was. >> guest: exactly. the west is a fusion of the anglo-saxon spanish, the united states and we have to also teach this to hispanics in this country. >> host: and non-hispanics i would argue. >> guest: we have to teach in non-hispanics for sure but we also have to teach it to hispanics because if you give somebody a stake, sense of ownership in the culture they will want to conserve the culture and the traditions. what we have is as i said before the progressive progressives is seen to hispanics as agents of change. we need to have hispanics as

agents of conservation. >> host: and reinforcement of our values. >> guest: to say these are your values. you are part owner of these because you helped create them. you have a stake in conserving them for you -- is a very important thing we need to do for our public schools and institutions. we are not doing that. we are doing the opposite. >> host: i agree with you. it's a tragedy that they have public schools have become agents of vocalizations. looking at hispanics and minorities in general as agents of change and we talked about texas versus california, talk about the political effort if you will of turning texas which is solidly red right now politically to blue in the future. >> guest: i think the political donors are investing a lot of money. the left is missing a lot of money in texas. they had a long view of things to conservatives don't. >> host: they always do, don't they? >> guest: is a long-term thing. it's not about the election of

2014 and not even about the presidential election of 2016. this is about what's going to happen the next couple of decades. as a conservative american someone who wants to conserve the country that my mic family immigrated to, who wants to conserve this experiment in people governing themselves, i want to make sure that we conserve american values. let me tell you one more thing about public schools and the gap we have. it is an outrage that we are consigning hispanics and african-americans to the schools that do not perform. we have a dual system here in this country. we have public schools that function extremely well in the suburbs. you go to a suburban school and what you see is, it's like tv. its parents and they are really

public-private partnerships with helicopter parents volunteering. if something needs to be paid for in the school doesn't have enough money to parents chipped in. on the other side many hispanics and many african-americans go to school you have to enter the school for a metal detector. >> host: huge brocker season separating the parents from the education. >> guest: and they do not letter people escape this. teachers unions are dead set against school choice which scores high for most hispanics varied very good reason. hispanics are very worried about losing their children to bad schools into the gangs and peer pressure. they want to make sure they will do whatever they want to put their kids in a cool good school where the peer pressure will be

virtuous. >> host: that is why the charter schools an explosion of charter schools are extremely popular within the hispanic and african-american committees. >> guest: i personally, we fought hard to go to a better school. we won that fight in miami. i want to better school than the one that was assigned to me in my own personal fight for school choice. we won it and i was better off for it. pipa a rapper for miami talks about how his mother used to y about their address to put them in a better school. we should not be forced to be doing these things. lying and breaking the law. we are fighting for our proceed to go to schools that function. it is a travesty that we can sign so many poor kids to nonperforming dangerous schools. >> host: and it's not just dangerous schools nonperforming.

even when they perform well often the type of information and perspective that they are giving is a total diversion against small r republican tradition. talk about c. scope in the agenda that's going on in our schools. >> guest: do you mean -. >> host: the multicultural. >> guest: again as i said they want to do is transform america. they want to make sure that we have a country adopt a nice country of different cultures and different societies. people do not immigrate here by the way to be balkanized. they want to join the mainstream and they want to succeed and they come in for economic reasons or political reasons or both and what they want to see is their children and grandchildren fit into society, thrive and do well. what is being done in their name

with c. scope them multiculturalism it is another travesty which is different from keeping kids consigned to those schools but it's also something we need. conservatives need to make sure that we reverse this. we need to speak out and when conservatives get into office of either party they need to make sure this is reversed for the sake of our country. not the sake of immigrants are hispanics but for the sake of our country. >> host: i often say to my friends who are very apprehensive about the so-called comprehensive immigration reform i say look guys if we close the borders more completely and if we had some magical way to shut shutdown the southern and northern border for that matter these problems of mulch it -- multiculturalism existed before this immigration rush and they will exist after. >> guest: i'm glad you brought that up because i don't go into the issue of illegal immigration

at all. the fights and arguments that we have and by the way it's an important argument to be had with 11 million people here illegally. we need to do something about our border but we leave no room for this. you are 100% right. if we do nothing about this multiculturalism we could lose her country the way we know our country. >> host: absolutely and even the demographic changes that are taking place within the country, these changes are not taking place because of border policy. they are taking place demographically and i don't know if i'm allowed to say it on c-span but these are taking place in the bedroom, not so much on the border. >> guest: is taking place in the classroom and in the bedroom and is taking place in the oval office. it's taking place in congress and we need to be active. conservatives need to wake up. the title of my book "a race for

the future" is because conservatives have to join the fight and make sure that we understand what is happening and reach out to hispanics with a message of mobility, of upward mobility. the right policies, the right tenor, the right tone because conservatives are very often don't use the right tone, some conservatives. the right policies as to what is important. how do you make hispanic americans make sure -- the statistics are awful right now. if you're born in the bottom two quintiles income wise i think you have of 4% chance of making it into the top income. >> host: wow that cuts totally against the grain of what america stands for. >> guest: it's not so much a question of inequality that mobility. has mobility becomes staff? have we stopped having rags to

riches stories and i think the ticket out of that his education. the ticket out of that a stable families. a mom and dad at home. these are important matters that need to be discussed openly. people are afraid to discuss these issues. >> host: because of political correctness. >> guest: it's very good for eric holder to say we are a nation of cowards because we refuse to discuss race but when you discuss anything that's important to get pilloried. >> host: believing in racial dialogue but is more of a monologue and intimidating of those who want to have an exchange of ideas. let's talk a little bit, i know you don't get into it much in the book about immigration, illegal immigration but let's talk a little bit about how we can prevent, i call it the cultural suicide that's going on in europe right now were because of the huge social welfare state of western europe you need new

influx of people and of course because of the shrinking birthrates in most western european countries you need immigration to support the huge social welfare state but the same time they are not integrating and assimilating in the same way that the united states has been so successful at doing. we also could use legal immigration but we are breaking away from it so much. are we in danger of going on the path of cultural civilization suicide the way western europe is? >> guest: we are at country of immigrants and it's very important to go back to how we assimilating immigrants in the past because it worked. we knew how to do this and we have lost this knowledge. i devote a lot of my book to have to go back to doing what we speak good at. with regards to europe i have to be careful but i nonetheless will tell you i completely agree with you. i was just in the highlands and

islands in the small town on a small island and have passed a church which was very pretty. a second time i passed it i realized it was no longer a church. it was now a community center. england, scotland and i might get into a lot of trouble for this, i think we need to see what is happening. i must say many europeans and the tory government is in london is not aware of this. >> host: hopefully it's not too little too late. >> guest: i had a conversation with michael gove who was recently the secretary of education. i talked to him last year and he's very lucid about what needs to happen. he's very lucid about the threat and the fact that they are not teaching kids the republican values because they are now monarchy by teaching civil values. i think the family is under threat across the continent and also in the u.k. and we need

allies in the world. we need friends and it is to me as somebody who thinks in terms of american national interest i want us to have friends and allies in the world. i look at europe and i worry for that reason but i also look at us and i worry. >> host: absolutely. i recall a friend of mine was going to france and they heard a warning from the french government saying certain parts of the suburbs that they have ceded control over. i mike oh my god is this a preview of our future we are not careful and going back to the way we assimilate. by the way i think it's important to make the point that again this is a home-grown problem. this is not being imported from central and south america. this is a problem that we have among americans. >> guest: by the way you mentioned france. france is to know how to do this. france was europe's version of the melting pot in which people to become french and i have for example a grandfather of my

grandmother was born in france of spanish parenting came to cuba in the 1870s. he was seen as a frenchman. he was born in france but with a french accent. france each know how to do this. france has also, something that is happening across the west but they are beginning to understand it. i had a conversation with an old colleague in scotland journalist who said actually people are beginning to slowly discover their roots. i do have high hopes for a year. >> host: let's talk about that as we wrap up. what is the hope for winning the future going back to your book? what suggestions do you make? you have already made some item bullet point form what are suggestions you make for conservatives that have the vision we share that we have to be aggressive in going to these communities and reach conservative values and limited government? >> guest: the first thing we need to do is make sure we are speaking with care. camp used to say and teddy

roosevelt they don't know how much you care until they know you care. they need to know you care and we need to go and explain how nefarious liberal policies have been in a hispanic family or hispanic mobility and how they are being kept. >> host: let me ask you something and i'm going to interview but would you distinguish between liberal classic hubert humphrey liberalism and progressivism modern-day progressivism? >> guest: progressivism i think by the way liberalism is a perfectly good term. in europe it means a free market person so they took a term. the left is good at taking our terms and trashing them like they took liberal and a community and then after they trashed it they said well this is a loser. which goes back to the 1910s and 1920s. i think that is in a way more scary because it's

multiculturalism. people talk about making the distinction between you know for example daniel patrick moynihan and we have talked about. >> host: who considered himself to be liberal. >> guest: when he went back to the city became more of a liberal when he worked as a bureaucrat. let's talk about the things that will help my thing. one is to explain what has happened with liberal policies and to hispanic families. you know we must be doing better and we should be doing better. so explain that an say this is no panacea for you. by the way if you are cuban liberalism, marxism destroyed your home country and if you are mexican-american statism and you know the corporatism for so many

years in the 20th century kept mexico poorer than it needed to be because mexico has a lot of oil. these things need to be explained. we also have to say here are the policies. we have policies that will help the families stay together. we have families that will help the family so you don't have to have this cliff effects that a single mother faces when she looks at either a promotion or getting a job or marrying a good man who is going to be a good role model for children. >> host: and losing benefits and losing in the capital. >> guest: the marginal tax increases over 100% sometimes. the effect of the marginal tax increases over 100% so as a rational economic actor you may not want to do this because of the immediate loss.

however it is getting a promotion in getting that job and being married to a good role model that will make sure that her children are not trapped in that quintile that finds it very difficult to break out and go to the top. we need to explain this and we need to do with love and as i said we need to describe an america that is the america that i believe in the america where people pitch in together with neighbor helps neighbor. the america that is -- we need to talk about the community meetings in england and in the midwest. don't forget hispanics came here with no book knowledge of these things. so the maelstrom the social tornado that happens from the 60s on hits hispanics worse because we lack folk memories of this. white americans and

african-americans still have have and can cling to and go back to. >> host: the exception to the rule of course been mexican-american to new mexico. >> guest: we have had so much immigration since then and in fact many mexican-americans are recent immigrants. mexican-americans are the oldest hispanic immigrants in the newest hispanic immigrants. >> host: wow what a paradox and do you see any sense of cultural tension between the newer mexican immigrants in the older mexican immigrants? i'm curious to see if they just absorbed the newer mexican immigrants absorbed into the older community's? >> guest: as i said that father and mother immigrant who worries and comes in here and because that's all immigrants come in to a neighborhood that is not a very wealthy neighborhood and because of the

policies we have in place that are nefarious has to send the children to the bad school, he worries about losing his children to pathologies. i care greatly for those immigrant parents who want to succeed. they came here to succeed and they are being kept from succeeding. by the way the statistics are that mexican immigrants coming here have a high work ethic -- ethic and children are alert, do well in school, have strong family. they have a high work ethic. a lot of that is frittered away within a couple of years. >> host: i strongly recommend of course that folks read "a race for the future." we can break the liberal monopoly among the hispanic community. actually we are closing up then again your book does not focus

very much on immigration reform. how do you feel when you have some politicians believe that the only way that you can communicate to the hispanic community is to promote -- >> guest: to be honest it is a gateway issue. many smart people say that it is an equal number of smart people say that it is not. i think if you look at the polls immigrants really think about economic success. hispanics think about education and hispanic rates high. hispanic understand how important education is to the success of america. they get that. immigration only goes to fourth or fifth place in terms of their priorities. obviously the spanish-language media feeds on the sunday talk about it a great deal. >> host: you talk about this

in your book the power of univision. >> guest: they are running on a feedback loop, but as you said if you closed the border today and do nothing but address the problems that i speak about that you and i have been talking about the country will not be better off. if you do the same thing and you have comprehensive immigration reform and you do nothing about these issues there's a problem that we need to fix and comprehensive immigration reform or closing the border by itself either of these things is not going to solve it. in my book i leave the debate to people. >> host: in "a race for the future" you focus on hispanic americans but it's really about the american community as a whole because of the problems confronting hispanics are confronting every group including white america.

>> guest: that's exactly right. because african-americans and hispanic americans are overrepresented in the lower income quintile's these problems are much worse for us than they are for non-hispanic whites. >> host: thank you so much mike gonzalez for your time. >> guest: thank you. >> i was "after words" booktv signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists public policymakers legislators and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs on booktv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday 12:09 p.m. on sunday in 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" on line. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page.

>> the issue of consolidation is to have these huge companies that are not only in control of the desperation of the content too and increasingly they are getting hammer locked with the news and information infrastructure that we as a democracy rely upon to govern ourselves. >> the adoption of smartphones is faster in minority committees than it is in suburban and white communities. that is fantastic news for america. you're seeing the developing world adopt such technologies very rapidly. that's fantastic news for improving the human condition, for allowing people to have the benefit of new information. it's going to change their political at expectations and are economic expectations in a positive and constructive way.

>> this is right in the midst and people were totally upset. i went up to the stage of one of my coalition members who also -- he did join our coalition. the lobby was full and i go up but i say can i see so-and-so and they said we couldn't get him. all at once the lobby became totally mine. did we have 40 or 50 people there. i am looking around and i look over and here are four of the largest chinese importers or exporters to this country. they were going that's him right over there. everybody lobby stopped talking

and it got deathly quiet. it's my sense of humor. this is my humor. i look and i walk right over to him and stood right next to him and of course i am 6 feet 8 inches and they are 5 feet 2 inches. i leaned down and i bent down so i would be the same level and they looked at me like this. everybody was waiting and we were that far from each other and i said, boo. [laughter] salac came the -- they all wanted to get their picture taken with me so they could e-mail it back to china and say guess who i had my picture taken with? [laughter] ..

>> >> to be a part of introducg